String Quartet No.2. Commissioned by Neo Quartet (Gdansk). Premiered in Oct 2019 at NeoArte-Synthesizer of Arts Festival, Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej „Łaźnia”, Gdansk, Poland. Published by Verlag Neue Musik.
- Submitting institution
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Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- Pritchard3
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- October
- Year
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The two movements of String Quartet II research, in different ways, the potential of coexistent, differentiated materials, and the aesthetic implications of contrasting approaches to their development. In the first movement this is done within a framework characterised by persistence but unpredictability, in the second by instability and constant transformation. Several possible methods of articulating these principles were investigated by a variety of techniques, some process based, some more intuitive and context based.
The first movement, slow, is essentially simple and economic, structured primarily on the basis of a pre-compositional ‘architectonic’ logic to establish the distribution, relationships and relative perspectives of its constituent elements. It explores textures of sustained pitches, destabilized by unpredictable accents, timbral transitions and microtonal ambiguity, set against pulses which are subject to periodic irregularity and abrupt timbral changes, later by violent, unpredictably disposed violin interjections. The movement ends enigmatically without resolution.
For the second movement, by contrast, a rotational permutation system was developed to generate a more complex form, in which six distinct materials circulate in ever changing combinations through a sequence of eleven short sections. The six materials are defined by specific characteristics: two rapid and rhythmically consistent (one detached, combining directional irregularity and repetition, the other legato and fluid), two rhythmically irregular (one staccato, one slower and always tremolo), two of longer durations (one always of trills, the other sustained pitches and glissandi).
These materials, which are superimposed in ever differing combinations, necessitated numerous compositional experiments to determine when and how there would be textural cohesion (homogeneity), and when a functional differentiation of materials (diversity). Although the bases of pitch and rhythm were derived from permutational devices, other parameters including tempo, tessitura, dynamic and many material details, were necessarily determined by purely musical and contextual criteria, in response to the pitch and rhythmic structures.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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